Too Late
by orangeflavor
Summary: "He thinks of her dark eyes slipping shut as he calls to her, her mouth tipping open as though to scream or cry or moan, but it is only blood that comes out. He thinks of the terror that clawed through his chest when she had stopped breathing." - Fenris discovers the weight of his own feelings for Hawke at the same time he realizes some things might come too late.


Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: This is a gift fic for **Flaminea** , as part of the Secret Santa fic exchange over at the Dragon Age Fanfiction Writer's Facebook group. I went _slightly_ AU with it.

Too Late

" _He thinks of her dark eyes slipping shut as he calls to her, her mouth tipping open as though to scream or cry or moan, but it is only blood that comes out. He thinks of the terror that clawed through his chest when she had stopped breathing."_ \- Fenris discovers the weight of his own feelings for Hawke at the same time he realizes some things might come too late.

" _Forgive me."_

The last words Fenris had left her with when he walked from Hawke's candle-warm room. He stands now on a darkened Hightown street, her balcony visible across the empty alley. He braces an arm along the stone wall of a building beside him, his eyes watching her balcony for any sign of movement.

He thinks maybe, if he could only see her, it might all become clear.

But there is nothing. She is gone from him.

No. That isn't right. He _left_ her.

Fenris clenches his jaw and takes in a strained breath, his hand curling into a fist along the stone. He remembers their time together several weeks ago so vividly. So hauntingly.

He can't be sure, but he thinks for a moment, for a single breathless instant, when he had moved against her in the night, that he might have been happy.

But then his memory was cracked and fractured, breaking along his mind like a flickering flame. Just within reach. But faltering. Hot to the touch. He could not hold onto it. And the moment he realized it was _her_ who caused those flashes of remembrance, he had run as fast as he could.

And yet, his eyes still turn to her.

It is a strange thing. To be caught in this half-place between memory and consciousness. To be tethered and free all at once.

His eyes glance to the red slip of silk around his wrist. He hasn't the heart to remove it, even when he aches to. He knows it will only bring him pain.

Something moves along his peripheral and Fenris snaps his eyes to her moonlit balcony. His arm drops from its brace along the wall as he straightens, body tensing. His gaze rakes over the empty balcony. In hope. In fear. In need he cannot give voice to.

But there is only shadow.

Fenris takes a step forward and then stops. It takes all of him not to go to her. Not to throw himself at her feet and beg for forgiveness. Not to gather her into his arms and never – _never_ – leave her again. But he has already made his choice.

He had been so afraid of losing the past, that he had not realized he lost his future that night, too.

He doesn't think there are apologies enough in the world to ease her pain.

And he knows that he deserves his.

* * *

Fenris always sits two seats away from Hawke when they all sit down at Varric's table for Wicked Grace. Far enough to be inconspicuous. Close enough to catch every sigh and breath and chuckle that falls from her lips. He spends the night keeping her image always in his peripheral. Constant. Ever-present.

He tells himself just the sight of her is enough.

"I'm out for this round," Hawke sighs, dropping her cards face down on the table and slouching back in her chair.

"Same," Anders groans, looking at his meager winnings.

Aveline sighs and drops her cards to the table, standing and rolling her neck. "I've got an early inspection tomorrow morning. I think I'll call it a night."

Merril pouts, bouncing in her chair. "I was finally starting to win."

"Actually, Daisy, I think you were just managing to _not lose_." Varric chuckles as he leans over the arm of his chair. "Quite a different beast, actually."

Isabela tuts and taps her cards against the table, looking around at everyone slowly standing from the table. "Already? You all are no fun."

"If by 'no fun' you mean ending your sad humiliation," Hawke retorts, quirking an eyebrow at the pirate's thinning pile of gold coins on the table, "then yes." She smirks. "I thought I'd leave you some dignity tonight."

"Always such a tease," Isabela purrs, winking.

Chairs scrape along the floor, goodbyes are said, and then it is a slow, tired shuffle to the door.

Fenris waits for Hawke at the entrance of the Hanged Man. She stops at the sight of him when she emerges from the tavern. Her previous smile falters, her mouth thinning to a tight line. "Fenris."

He opens his mouth but it is only silence that fills the air between them. He swallows thickly. "It is late," he manages haltingly. "I should walk you home."

She stands there watching him a moment. Her eyes shift over to catch sight of Merril and Isabela sauntering off down a farther alley. "Thanks, but I know the way." She turns back, just enough to flash a forced smile his way, and then she is off, marching her way up the alley to Hightown.

Fenris moves to follow. "We are already going in the same direction."

"I don't think we've been going in the same direction for a while now, Fenris," she sighs, voice deadening.

He almost stops at the words. Instead he clamps his mouth shut, eyes shifting to the floor in shame. He slows instantly, wanting to put the distance between them that he knows she craves. But then she is turning sharply, stopping before him.

She blows an exasperated breath through her lips and crosses her arms, hands clasping around her frame. "I'm sorry, I didn't –" She stops, a sharp huff of air leaving her in indecision.

"You have nothing to apologize for, Hawke. I understand." His hands curl into fists at his side.

"But do you?" she questions, brows furrowing over her dark eyes as she takes a step closer.

He opens his mouth, pauses, closes it once more. His jaw twitches with the force of his clenched teeth. His voice is tight and even. "To be honest, there is very little about you I understand, Hawke."

Her eyes shift between his and she licks her lips in thought. "You could find out. There is reward to risk, Fenris."

He cocks his head in question but says nothing.

Hawke sighs again, shaking her head and looking off to the side, breaking their gazes. "But you were never one for risk, were you?" she breathes softly, words barely leaving her.

This time Fenris finds words on his tongue, but she is already turning, and the sharp line of her back is like a howl. He finds his hand reaching toward her without realizing it. He touches air. He didn't think it would hurt like this.

All at once, Fenris discovers two immutable, unchangeable facts.

The first: that he is utterly in love with her.

And the second: that it is too late to matter.

* * *

"There is no need for this, Hawke," Fenris breathes tersely beside her.

Hawke glances at him, her long dark braid falling over her shoulder as she leans down to tighten her boot laces. Around them, the Viscount's throne room is abuzz with fear and whispers. The Arishok stands ready at the top of the steps, his muscles bunching in readiness, his striking gaze affixed to them.

Hawke sighs and straightens, her hands moving to grasp her twin daggers along her back. She pulls them from their sheaths and stands with them at low-ready. Her fingers flex in anxious trepidation. "The Arishok begs to differ," she answers with a cheeky grin.

"But why you?" he whispers heatedly, stepping closer to her.

She tenses, her shoulders going taut, her face shuttered by his closeness. It takes him aback, her natural withdrawal from him. Somewhere deeper it cuts him. But he will not voice it. Instead, he eases back, gaze flicking to the floor. He clears his throat. "I am sorry."

Hawke steadies her breath, licks her lips, and lets out a weary sigh that conceals more than it calms.

Fenris lifts his gaze to hers.

"I'm 'basalit-an', didn't you hear?" she chuckles, though her voice is quaking. She clears her throat and lifts her chin. "Wouldn't want to turn the poor man down, now would I? Think of the gossip." She levels him with a smirk, her eyes glinting. She swallows tightly and looks back over her shoulder where the Arishok is slowly descending the stairs.

Varric and Aveline stand close by, their eyes fixed on the Qunari lord. Isabela paces before them, her gaze flicking between Hawke and the Arishok, her hands fidgeting. Fenris cannot keep the resentment from his eyes when he looks at the rogue pirate.

Hawke's voice brings him back. "Don't worry."

Fenris looks at her.

"I'll leave some for you," she quips, her grin stretching wide.

He wonders if she believes it.

Hawke takes a step back, nodding slightly, her hands gripping tightly to the hilt of her daggers. The sudden terror that flashes across her face is instant and barely there. But he sees it all the same. She is about to turn when Fenris moves.

She once called him selfish. He knows now that she is right. Because in this moment, right now, in this instant of uncertainty, all he knows is fear. The fear that this is it. The end. The last he'll see her blinding smile or hear her cocky voice or, Maker damn him, breathe her glorious air.

The last he'll get to taste her.

So he does.

His mouth is on hers before she can brace herself for it, his hands gripping her arms to hold her to him. He shudders against her, his lips breaking from hers with a ragged breath. She blinks up at him in awed silence.

And when he braces his forehead against hers, and catches the faint sob that leaves her, he thinks maybe he was wrong.

Wrong to move to her. Wrong to want her.

Wrong to love her.

Hawke stands stock still against him, and it isn't until he pulls back just enough to catch her dark eyes that she speaks, her voice faltering. "That's certainly one way to wish me luck."

Fenris lets out a short, nervous laugh, his throat tightening instantly. He releases her, and she steps back, just out of reach. Her body is still tense, still guarded.

He hates that he has nurtured it in her.

But when she smiles, slow and hesitant, her lips breaking open like the summer dawn, Fenris finds the courage to let her go.

* * *

There is a moment when Fenris is sure she will die.

His body stops. Simply stops. His breath. His heart. His everything. Still and broken. Watching in helpless horror.

She is on the ground, one hand to the gaping gash along her ribs, the other bracing her along the bloodied ground. There is a swollen red cut along her cheek and a thin slash along her thigh, where the Arishok's blade had sliced through her protective leathers. Her daggers are strewn across the floor several feet from her, just behind the Arishok as he bears down atop her. His arms are raised, blade blood-slicked and cold in the air. And then he is bringing it down with his full weight.

Hawke grunts with pain when she rolls herself toward him, his blade crashing into the ground where she previously laid. She grabs onto one of his feet, her legs wrapping around the other to pull his leg back and throw him off balance. He growls in surprise and annoyance as he falls forward, arms going out to brace his fall, blade clattering to the floor alongside him.

Her yelp of pain is sharp and cutting as Hawke reaches out to one of her daggers and haphazardly grabs the hilt, her grip slipping with the blood along her palm. She struggles under the Arishok's legs, her gasp of pain halting her momentarily, her fingers finally locking around the hilt and she swings it back, digging into the back of the Arishok's knee. He howls at the stab, pushing himself up at the chest and roaring in fury as he twists back, back-handing Hawke hard enough to make her spit blood.

She scrambles from beneath his legs, vision spinning, just as he pushes to one knee, his hand closing around his fallen sword. Hawke sees red. Her blood pumps furiously within her, her mind racing, her breath harsh and stinging in her chest. She moves on instinct. She draws her dagger back and lashes out again, swiping along his other leg and the blood spurts in a wide bloom across her face. Again he howls, going down on his elbows, his roar shaking the room.

Hawke ignores the pain and clambers atop his back, one arm looping around his throat, her other hand sinking her dagger deep into his ribs. She can feel his thunderous bellow all the way to her bones and she stabs once more. But then he is pushing back, slamming her back along the floor and the gasp of pain that leaves her halts the breath in her throat. She almost loses her hold on him. But something stronger than fear, something stronger than pain, makes her grip tight to him, her cough of blood splattering along his cheek. She pulls the dagger from his side and sinks it deep into his throat.

It is a gurgle that leaves him, his body still thrashing violently beneath her hold and even wounded and bleeding as he is, his strength is still more than hers. One of his hands reaches for hers against his throat and he twists her wrist until it breaks. Hawke screams. Loud and razor-sharp. Cutting like a whip and just as painful. She has barely the mind to notice his other hand moving for her dagger against his throat.

With a snarl and a dark, dangerous surge of wrath, Hawke pulls her blade free from his throat and then dives back in. Full force. With everything of herself. And then again. Again and again until the only sounds are her desperate screams. Her furious breathing. Her broken sobs.

The Arishok slumps back against her, pinning her to the floor with his deadened weight. She tastes blood along her tongue but cannot be sure it is her own. Her dagger clatters to the floor, her hand falling limp beside it. She tries to breathe, but the weight of the Arishok atop her and the sharp pain in her side makes her gasp helplessly.

She wonders if this is how it all ends.

And then Fenris' face is before her, his brilliant hair cascaded in light from the high windows. "Hawke," he breathes and she closes her eyes to the sound.

Her body goes slack.

* * *

Hawke finally wakes after two days. Fenris finds her in the garden when he gathers the courage to visit. She is standing with her profile to him, wrapped in a thin robe, one hand clutching at her collar, bunched around her chest, the other hanging limply at her side, wrapped in bandages where her wrist had broken. She leans against one of the wooden beams of the pergola in the center of the garden, her face turned toward the sun. Light filters in slants through the open roof of the pergola to rest in pockets of warmth around her form. Her dark hair hangs knotted down her back, and the sight throws him for a moment, her hair free from her trademark braid for the first time he's ever seen.

Even that night.

Fenris wonders if he is intruding on something private, something intimate, but before he can step back through the open doors leading into the garden, the rustle of his boots catches her attention and she turns to him.

Her skin is pale from the recent blood loss, her eyes red-rimmed and bleary. Her lip is split open and the promising bloom of a dark bruise stretches over her cheek.

But then she smiles.

And Fenris remembers that she is alive when she nearly wasn't and he is too far in love with her to think her anything less than beautiful in this moment.

He moves to her, stopping just before her, his hands hanging uncertain and useless at his side. "Hawke." It is all that he can manage in this moment.

She smiles genuinely, her hand falling from her collar and brushing the dark strands of hair from her cheek. "One and only."

He simply watches her for a moment, the slow breath of relief pooling in his lungs. Anders had informed him of her condition, how he had healed the broken bones and closed the dangerous gash in her side, but she had refused anything else. The others had all made their way to her estate at some point or another that day, wishing her a swift recovery and offering their services. Fenris blinks at the remembrance of his last conversation with Anders. "Should you not be resting in bed?" he asks suspiciously, brow quirking.

She brings a finger to her lips in a conspiratorial manner and winks. "I won't tell if you won't." Her grin widens, and her finger drops. She pulls a long, deep breath in and releases it easily. "Besides, too stuffy in there." She cocks her head back toward the stone wall of the estate.

"It is good to know you are well."

"Ah, well, it'll take more than an Arishok to send me to the Maker." She shrugs her shoulders with her smile.

Fenris' thin smile dips slowly into a frown. "Do not make so light of it, Hawke. Death was nearly at your door." His chest constricts at the thought.

Hawke lifts one shoulder in a quick, nonchalant dismissal, her eyes shifting over the gardens. "Sounds like a Tuesday to me." She tries to laugh but it is more a choked scoff. So she clamps her mouth shut and steps further into the garden, so that Fenris cannot see her face.

He is silent at her withdrawal, thoughtful for a moment, and then he follows her. "I am sorry, Hawke, I simply…" He trails off, because he isn't sure he even has the right to such feelings anymore.

She glances over her shoulder at him with a raised brow, a motion to continue. She steps along the sun-warmed path and trails a hand out to touch a particularly tall-stalked lily.

Fenris sighs. "Your cheek, and your lip," he says instead, motioning with his hand. "Why have you not let Anders heal them?"

Hawke stops in her walk and looks down at the lily in her hand, a shaky, somewhat pained smile stretching across her lips. "He's done enough. And maybe some part of me, the part that isn't really sure I _didn't_ die in that chamber with the Arishok…" She stops, voice cracking slightly, but then she clears her throat and continues. "Maybe that part of me needs to feel this pain. Just to know for sure. To remember."

Fenris takes a cautious step closer, so that he could raise a hand to her stiff shoulders from where he stands, so that he could trace the bunch of muscles along her back through the thin silk of her robe.

So that the scent of her, like oil and hot stones from the summer heat, steadies him at her back.

"Remember what?" he breathes softly.

She turns slightly, her gaze coming over her shoulder to catch his behind her. "That some hurts are only temporary," she whispers, her eyes meaningful on his.

He opens his mouth to speak but she shakes her head, her whole body slumping with her sigh and she attempts to move past him, her barely heard "Don't, Fenris" slipping through the air between them.

He catches her unharmed wrist, stilling her as she tries to brush past him. She stops at his touch but doesn't raise her gaze to his. He moves his mouth just above her ear. "Hawke, please, I must – there are things I must say. While I am still able." He thinks of her bloody and broken form trapped beneath the weight of a dead Qunari lord. He thinks of her dark eyes slipping shut as he calls to her, her mouth tipping open as though to scream or cry or moan, but it is only blood that comes out.

He thinks of the terror that clawed through his chest when she had stopped breathing.

She closes her eyes to his breath at her ear. "What if I don't want to hear them?"

The words hurt more than Fenris ever thought they could, and his grip tightens on her wrist. Part of him wants to shout the words, wants to _make_ her hear them, because he thinks he might drown in them if he doesn't. But another part of him, the part that he's sure has always belonged to her, even when he hadn't known it, is willing to let her go.

If it is what she wants. If it is what will heal the wound he carelessly left over her heart that night he walked out.

Then he will leave and never come back. And he will hold his peace.

If she so wishes it.

His fingers loosen around her wrist. It is a croak that leaves him. "Then I will do as you wish." His words quake with the effort to speak them, and he trails his fingers over her slender wrist for a hesitant moment before finally pulling back. He turns from her, without catching the surprised look on her face.

Because if he lays eyes on her now he will not have the strength to walk away again.

"Wait," she calls to his back.

Fenris stills.

Hawke curses beneath her breath, jutting one hip out and planting her hand on her waist, her other hand rubbing over her forehead. "Wait, Fenris," she sighs. "I'm sorry, I…I just…"

"I have already said, you have no need to apologize." He says the words over his shoulder, his gaze locked on a dying violet at his feet. His breath is coiled tight in his chest, his lungs aching for air.

Hawke sighs again, and then blows an exasperated breath from her lips. "Look, Fenris, I'll…I'll hear you out. We've always been friends. I don't…I don't mean to end that. I'm sorry." She takes a couple hesitant steps toward him, her hand reaching out to wrap around his elbow. "Please, sit." She motions for the bench beside them, bathed in broken sunlight from the open roof of the pergola.

Fenris catches sight of it. He takes a single, steady breath in and nods, moving to sit beside her.

It is many moments later that he finally speaks, his hands clasped tightly in his lap, his back painfully straight. His gaze flicks to hers and suddenly he knows exactly what must be said. He thinks of her words.

'Friends', she had said.

How even now, she humbles him.

And he knows she deserves so much more than he will ever be able to offer her.

So it comes down to this.

"You have been…a _good_ friend, Hawke," he begins, words strained in his throat. He lifts his chin and softens his gaze, his eyes reverent on hers. "More than I ever thought I could deserve. Or need. And…I do, Hawke," he breathes hesitantly, eyes never leaving hers. "I _do_ need you."

Her eyes widen minutely, her back straightening, but she doesn't speak.

He takes a calming breath in and tries to find the words to tell her. To _show_ her.

How much it means to even breathe her air.

"I am sorry it took me so long to say it." He shifts in his seat, his hands moving from their tight clasp in his lap and one trembling, gauntleted hand reaching over to cover hers on her knee. "But I need you to know that I do not expect your forgiveness, and certainly not –" He stops, the words catching in his throat. He swallows down the trepidation and continues. "Certainly not your love. It is all I can ask that you even permit _my_ love. Because whatever you are willing to give, whatever glance or word or moment you will grant me, I will be content. That you should even look at me, is more than I have a right to ask for."

Hawke sucks in a breath at his words, her mouth opening as thought to speak but nothing comes. Her chest rises unevenly with her disbelief, her fingers curling against her leg.

Fenris looks to his hand over hers and releases a heavy breath of fear, the blaring disquiet coiling tight in his gut. "If I have to spend the rest of my life proving my earnestness and my contrition to you, then I shall. Because you are worth it, Hawke. Because you are worth everything. Because you _are_ my life now." He looks up into her eyes. "And because I think you always have been, even when I was too frightened and blind to know it."

"Fenris…" Hawke clears her throat when she catches the break in her voice. Wetness dots the corners of her eyes and she wipes at them quickly, rubbing a hand across her nose and wincing at the pain in her lip. She shakes her head and blinks at him. "Fenris, I gave you my heart once before and you…" She licks her lips, throat tightening. "You made it clear that your past meant more to you. I'm not prepared to share you with it. I'm selfish, Fenris. There's no way around it. I want all of you." She does not flinch when she says it, her eyes hardening. Her mouth thins into a tight line.

Fenris slides off his seat on the bench and to his knees before her. "Then you shall have it," he urges, his hand tightening around hers. "My sword, my heart, my life. They are yours. For as long as you will have them."

Slowly, so barely he might not have seen it had he not seen it every night in his dreams, a hesitant smile pulls at her lips. It isn't even fully formed when Hawke pulls her lip between her teeth and stops it, cocking her head and huffing dramatically. "Are you sure? Because I don't think –"

His growl stills the words in her throat and he leans up to wind both hands through her dark hair. "If I must quiet your mouth to show you –" he breathes promisingly against her lips just before he presses all the way forward and kisses her. He can feel her smirk against his mouth and he sighs into her, his tongue coaxing along her lips until she parts them. His tongue slides deftly in and she moans into his mouth, her hands coming up to wrap tenderly along his wrists as he holds her. Fenris kisses her like it is the first and last and only time he ever will.

Like she had nearly died.

And like he nearly did as well.

Fenris breaks from her with a harsh pant, his thumbs sliding over her cheeks as he licks his lips, tasting her there still. She laughs softly against his mouth and something pulls at his heart with the sound.

"You know," she begins, one hand moving from his wrist to snake through his hair and rest at the back of his neck. He closes his eyes and releases a soft hiss at the sensation. Her smirk widens and her words come out in a low, playful whisper. "I'm not _entirely_ convinced."

Fenris opens his eyes at her words and flashes a mischievous smirk her way. His eyes dart down to her lips, the tight coil of emotion in his chest slowly blossoming out. "Then allow me to prove myself," he answers with a smirk, leaning the rest of the way forward so that his words break against her lips in a heated whisper.

"By all means."

His answer is in the way he braces the back of her neck with his slender hand, the way he winds a sure arm around her waist and pulls her to her feet, the way he keeps his hand braced along her back as they kiss. It's in the way his touch is almost disbelieving. As though certain he will wake and she will be gone.

But she doesn't leave. And he doesn't wake.

And it isn't until years later, when his skin is wizened and her hair is grey and the ache in their bones tells them they have loved long and loved well, that Fenris understands it is never too late to matter.


End file.
